Good practice is practice that moves you forward. Obviously.

Wait, come back.

When I was young, I played the flute. Mostly I played the flute because my dad had played the flute and playing an instrument was a thing you did in my hometown. I was technically terrible. I felt no music in my heart. My favorite part of practice was standing with legs spread on either side of my Labrador who insisted on laying down in front of my music stand. When I played notes that were too high for her, she stood up. It was terribly exciting.

I could play all the scales, and when looking at the music on the stand, I could make a solid effort at the marches and church music. I could listen to the metronome or play while it was also on, but neither were particularly connected. A funny thing started to happen.

Eventually, I got better.

At the same time I was struggling through basic musical expression, I was taking math courses harder than anyone thought possible for me*. When the math added concepts like variables and matrices and proofs, the lower level addition-subtraction-multiplication-division got to be quick as a thought. Which was how fast I needed to perform it when I played.

My first writing mentor** told me to listen to dialogue around me in order to develop the sense for natural speech in my writing. During this time, I kept reading books (which I still do) and someone at a seminar talked about removing all the unnecessary parts of conversation. We don’t need the uhm, the mhm, the mmm, the uh, the hi how are you. We need the important part of the conversation. Somewhere in all those books that had gone through agents and editors galore were the important parts of conversations.

In my good practice sessions, I figured out how to combine the “listening to conversation around” me, and the “necessary parts of conversation” for concise, character demonstrating, clear dialogue. I even figured out where to add the well-placed mmm and uh and the difference between hi how are you and hi you alright***.

Good practice moves me forward but it needs more techniques than the single thing that I think I’m practicing.

*When I was ten, I had a math homework worth 25 points. There were 24 questions, and you got an extra point for putting your name in the right place and spelling it correctly. I got 4%.

**In the grand tradition of small towns, Mrs. Betty L Speckles was a friend of my mom’s from quilt guild. When she found out that Betty had published some poems, my mom asked if Betty would give me some pointers. I am forever grateful that she said yes.

***Hi you alright is the British greeting and the answer is Yeah. Or Yes. Or the American ignore and move on because you honestly have no idea how to answer it. I entered the country in September and did not figure out how to answer that question until February.